Using or considering using salesforce.com to manage your telemarketing? If so, you need to step outside of salesforce’s productivity tracking system- it just requires too many steps.

Think about it. If you’re using salesforce.com for sales tracking, then you already know how tough it is to get your salespeople to dot all of their i’s and cross all of their t’s so you can generate timely and accurate forecasts. The typical salesperson only completes in the neighborhood of 25 to 30 calls a day. So, if it takes them 5 to 10 minutes to update the contact record, the to-do list, the forecast, and etceteras for a single call, their productivity level still falls in the “acceptable” range.

However, impose this regimen on a telemarketer expected to make 100 to 150 calls a day, and his productivity will quickly plummet to dismal levels. It’s not just the amount of time needed to update all the screens, but the mere act of excessive navigating will throw any telemarketer off his game.

By “excessive” I mean anything more than 2 screens. A telemarketer shouldn’t have to deal with more than one screen showing the prospect list and another screen to update records. To implement this in salesforce.com while still maintaining some day-to-day productivity tracking, simply add several fields to your contact record:

1. LastEdit: Date field updated every time your agent makes a call
2. Rating: Resulting record disposition updated after every call

Then, in the reporting section, create a cross-tab using these fields. You will need to manually copy the report into a spreadsheet every night to track your stats over time (salesforce.com will overwrite the results with every day of fresh calling).

To allow the agents to manage their callbacks, simply add a Callback field as well. Don’t make them use saleforce.com’s ToDo system.

Now, create a view for your agents. Use your contacts table and show the following columns (in this order): Rating, LastCall, Callback, Account, Contact Name, and Title. You can add some additional columns if they will fit on the screen and will help your agents navigate their lists.

Voila! Problem solved. Your agents can now move between records using just 2 screens, and you can track productivity.